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Contest reminder: Don't forget to enter our contest to win The Essential Games of the Chicago Cubs DVD set. It runs through Sunday. This has nothing to do with talent, as Castro has as much of it as anyone in baseball. This comes down too mind frame and plate approach. In my mind, Starlin Castro is as good a 2 …

During Theo Epstein's introductory press conference, as well as the many rounds he made to various radio and tv shows, there is one line that I remember more than any other. if you do a great job, you're right 55 percent of the time. Of the many hours Theo spent talking with people about the Cubs on that day, I …

The Cubs signed DeJesus on November 30th to a 2-year guaranteed contract with a 3rd year option. He's guaranteed $10.5 million over the contract. I think a couple of the reasons the Cubs chose DeJesus is quite simple and I mentioned them in that article. DeJesus played RF for 116 games last season and played 8 games in CF. He’s …

Garza has a rough outing While the Cubs starters have been impressive in their short outings for far this spring, Matt Garza ran into trouble in the second and had to be pulled after walking in a run or two. He's mostly just working on his fastball and changeup, and batters were sitting on it. He told Muskat: I’ve been …

Carlos Pena signed a 1-year, $10 million contract with the Cubs last offseason. We knew a few things about Pena: he wasn’t going to hit for average, he would take a lot of walks and have a solid OBP and he would hit for some power. The league batting average last year was .255 and Pena hit .225. Pena’s OBP …

Back in April I wondered if Brett Jackson was one of the three best outfielders in the Cubs organization. The conclusion at the time was that Jackson was certainly one of the three best on the team. In fact, his projections were similar to Kosuke Fukudome‘s, but considering Jackson would play CF he was projected to be more valuable over …

Yu Darvish could be posted by his Japanese team this winter makng him available to all 30 MLB clubs. He turned 25 years old on August 16th so 2012 would be his age 25 season. That’s one year younger than Daisuke Matsuzaka who Darvish will often be compared to in the coming months. It’s an unfair comparison. While Matsuzaka was …

The Cubs played the Reds just last week, and five of the six starters from that series are pitching this series. I’m just going to make a few minor tweaks to the last preview (laughing). Team overview As always, these are team stats with NL ranks in parentheses. Reds Cubs wOBA .322 (4th) .315 (8th) UBR 14.2 (1st) -11.4 (16th) …

Ever since Aramis Ramirez remembered how to hit baseballs there has been increasing talk here and elsewhere about how his trade value suddenly jumped. Him hitting baseballs well again certainly did not hurt his value and did even increase it slightly, but we’re still talking two months for a guy who will make $4.9 million. His current ZiPS rest of …

Multiple reports claim that the Cubs are close to sending Kosuke Fukudome to the Cleveland Indians for two prospects (according to Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Paul Hoynes, it’s an upper level and lower level prospect, one a pitcher and another a position player. The Cubs well send cash to cover most if not all of Fukudome’s salary. Supposedly Fukudome has waived …